LET TERS
HEART OF THE MATTER
MARCUS AND WE
Thank you so much for printing Laetitia
Beraud’s insightful Viewpoint from Lille,
France, Jan. 15. It was amazing to see such
deep insight from a youngster. She really
gets to the heart of the matter, and her
juxtaposition of Voltaire’s quote with the
quote from the anonymous Muslim woman
at the end of the article was masterful.
I would argue that the root of the problem
is that some of the Muslim population
feels as if they cannot identify with the
mainstream French society in which they
marginally live. This separation of identity
breeds a mindset in which you can literally
live in the same city with people, yet feel
no connection or shared fate. You can
then dehumanize those whom you do not
identify with, and even brutally kill them
over some perceived slight.
One may argue the answer to this
conundrum would be some soul searching on
the part of these young extremists, but I would
argue that the most direct solution would be
for the non-Muslim people of France to use
this opportunity to reach out and embrace the
moderate Muslim culture there and pull these
people into their fold of shared dreams and
culture. To merge identities and families is the
VIEWPOINT
Just when you think you’ve seen it all at Reality Kitchen, we recently had a special visit
from a very special friend, UO Ducks quarterback Marcus Mariota!
He heard about the program we have and was kind enough to stop by before leaving
town for the national championship game. Mariota also signed a football after touring our
bakery and visiting with program participants. Running a community inclusion program
means many things, and when one of the community’s favorite sons comes to visit, we
make sure he leaves with some pretzels and our best wishes for his success in his future!
Thanks so much, Marcus! Come on back any time.
Jim Evangelista
Reality Kitchen Nonprofit
MIKE DIXON AND MARCUS
MARIOTA AT REALITY KITCHEN
Eugene
way to go. That way the distance between the
two cultures would diminish and eventually
get washed away. The type of ideas that
breed extremism would not have any ground
to plant themselves when everyone looked
around and saw only family.
Scott Zarnegar
Bohemia City
TRAUMATIC FOR KIDS
I’m having trouble understanding
the reasoning behind your Jan. 15 cover,
the Mickey Mouse beheading. I have an
18-month-old daughter in a huge Mickey
phase, and I didn’t feel it was appropriate
for her to see Mickey like that. Since she
is so young, luckily it doesn’t have much
impact on her but I worry as a mother for
older children who do recognize what is
happening.
I can’t shield her from everything, I
know, but when I can’t understand the
point of something is when I take offense.
Please consider what you put on your
covers as they are out in public at almost
every business we frequent. This is the first
time I’ve had a problem with it. Thank you
for your attention to this matter.
Sarah Hotaling
Eugene
I just brought home the Jan. 15 Weekly
and my 4-year-old daughter said it best:
“That’s horrible. They just shouldn’t
do that; it’s not right!” I responded,
“You’re right.” The cover shows ISIS
beheading Mickey Mouse, a reference to
the Disneyland in Paris, and the terrorist
killing of the 12 cartoonists at the Charlie
Hebdo paper in the name of the prophet
Mohammed, by ISIS apparently (I might
add a religious extremist group).
Her initial reaction is right: All of
society should be reviled and sickened by
this disgusting use of beheading as a tool
BY LYNNE FE SSENDEN
Slow Money
INVESTING CLOSER TO HOME IS NOW EASIER
T
he Slow Money movement is about
transitioning from an economy based
on extraction and consumption to an
economy based on conservation and
renewal. It is about investing close to
home and seeing your dollars make tangible change
in your community. Following on the heels of the
international Slow Food movement, which was begun
by Italians to defend regional traditions, good food,
gastronomic pleasure and a slow pace of life, Slow
Money is based on the premise that we should be
investing in the future of our food, i.e., the soil, the
farms and the food businesses populating our local
food systems.
We know what it looks like when households invest
in a farm for a year, through a Community Supported
Agriculture program: Farmers make a living, they get
cash up front in the spring; consumers get a weekly
box of food throughout the season and assume some
of the risk. What would it look like if some of us
took the CSA concept a bit further? Imagine several
community members giving farmers small loans
of $2,000 to $5,000 toward that new greenhouse or
tractor. Maybe the loan is repaid in cash, maybe in
food. Obviously you are not going to grow your kids’
college fund in this way, but if we all planted a mere
1 percent of our savings where we live, the collective
investment would be extraordinary.
The Slow Money principles (from slowmoney.
org):
• We must bring money back down to earth.
• There is such a thing as money that is too fast,
companies that are too big, finance that is too complex.
Therefore, we must slow our money down — not all of
4
PORNOGRAPHY OF FEAR
January 22, 2015 • eugeneweekly.com
it, of course, but enough to matter.
• The 20th century was the era
of buy low/sell high and wealth
now/philanthropy later — what
one venture capitalist called
“the largest legal accumulation
of wealth in history.” The 21st
century will be the era of nurture
capital, built around principles
of carrying capacity, care of the
commons, sense of place and
nonviolence.
• We must learn to invest as if food, farms and
fertility mattered. We must connect investors to the
places where they live, creating vital relationships and
new sources of capital for small food enterprises.
• Let us celebrate the new generation of entrepreneurs,
consumers and investors who are showing the way from
making a killing to making a living.
• Paul Newman said, “I just happen to think that
in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts
back into the soil what he takes out.” Recognizing the
wisdom of these words, let us begin rebuilding our
economy from the ground up.
Slow Money founder Woody Tasch spoke at UO
in February 2013 and the crowd sat up and listened.
Tasch is the author of Inquiries into the Nature
of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and
Fertility Mattered. He spent another day in Eugene,
meeting with a group of farmers, food business owners
and interested investors. The Slow Money South
Willamette Valley chapter emerged from this event.
Community member Erin Ely attended the national
Slow Money conference in Boulder that spring and
came back with information about different models for
local investing. The group decided to keep it simple
and stick with the peer-to-peer lending for starters.
Interested investors were brought together with
farmers and other food business owners looking for
capital, and the lending details were
worked out between individuals. In
the past year and a half, six peer-
to-peer loans totaling $98,000 have
been made to two farms and four
food businesses.
Now
another
community
investment model is on the
horizon. Just this month a ruling
was passed by state regulators that
will allow Oregonians to easily
invest in and earn a return from
Oregon businesses that create jobs and contribute to
their own communities. Referred to as Community
Public Offering, this program allows businesses in
the state to raise up to $250,000 in capital from their
fellow Oregonians. Businesses must first meet certain
criteria to help assure investors that they are a legitimate
Oregon enterprise. Individual investors must be Oregon
residents and can invest up to $2,500 in any one offering.
Amy Pearl, executive director of Hatch Innovation
in Portland, says, “If Oregonians brought back home
just 1 percent of the savings they have in Wall Street and
invested those dollars in Oregon businesses, we could
have nearly a billion dollar infusion of investment in the
state’s economy.” Pearl was instrumental in drafting the
new rules and working with state regulators to bring the
concept of community capital to Oregon.
Learn more about Community Public Offering at
a launch event from 6 to 9 pm Thursday, Jan. 29, at
Red Wagon Creamery, 55 W. Broadway. Read more at
slowmoneyswv.org.
Lynne Fessenden is the executive director of Willamette Farm and Food
Coalition, a community nonprofit connecting farmers and consumers in
Lane County. Lanefood.org